Jahreszeiten einer Ehe

Great "find" in video stores boasts a really good script regarding the sexual strayings of a mid-life couple. Anthony Hopkins plays the philandering husband (Bo Derek the young hot tart) and Shirley MacLaine plays the wife who takes up with a lover of her own. This topic is now "hot" again what with Oscar winner "American Beauty" not to mention the whole Monica-Clinton affair. Don't let Bo Derek's name keep you from watching this film (and why should it when Anthony Hopkins and Shirley MacLaine are the leads?) Bo does the "Bo" thing early on (in a hot tub no less) so this film really does offer the best of all worlds. Should be watched with another Shirley MacLaine movie with a very similar plot that was released the same year (1980) called "Loving Couples" (with James Coburn the philandering husband and a young Susan Sarandon the young hot tart). They were released between "Being There" (1979) and "Terms of Endearment" (1983) so if you are wondering what Shirley MacLaine did between her two very different roles in those films here's your answer. Shirley is charming. Great entertainment.

Quirky, thoroughly offbeat erotic comedy is ultimately worth seeing, despite its talkiness and its occasionally stagy direction. It sure deals with some serious subjects in a less-than-plausible way (the characters are way too calm and civilized), but its gentle eccentricity, and the appealing performances by the entire cast (Bo Derek is stunning!), leave you with a nice impression. Fair film.

Advertised as a wacky marital sex romp (with allusions to wife-swapping), this Erich Segal script surprises by being a mostly sobering look at a marriage between two middle-agers (Shirley MacLaine and Anthony Hopkins) which has faltered and can't really be rectified. Released alongside a spate of similar middle-age-crazy comedy-dramas (including MacLaine's "Loving Couples", which she made back-to-back with "Seasons"), this one has the added appeal of seeing serious-minded Hopkins romancing Bo Derek (fresh off her triumph in "10" and usually out of her clothes). The writing is often achingly 'cute', with hardly a wink to the audience to let us know co-writer Segal is in on the joke. However, the more thoughtful moments (integrated unobtrusively by director Richard Lang) offer some insight into what breaks up a marital union, and both MacLaine and Hopkins have strong scenes. ** from ****

How can two future Oscar winners star in a movie and have zero chemistry? Try a hackneyed plot, pedestrian direction with self-important pretentious, a grandiose score, and pointless dialogue. The cinematography is excellent, though, and the supporting cast, especially TV-veteran Edward Winter (best performance in film) is surprisingly robust, considering the material (EXCEPT Bo Derek, or course, whose notoriety from 10 is one of the reasons this was rushed to the big screen prematurely.

Anthony Hopkins plays a University professor engaged in an affair with a young student(Bo Derek, the perfectly cast "10"). His wife(played by Shirley MacLaine)finds out about it, but rather than divorce him, instead has an affair of her own with a young carpenter who just so happens to be doing work in their home. Hopkins is none to pleased by this, yet the four of them nonetheless go on a skiing trip together at their vacation cabin, where relationships will come to a head, since their college age daughter also arrives with her boyfriend...

Good actors cannot do much with such mundane material. Its attempts to be "modern" about the morality of affairs is awkward and unconvincing, and the film is mostly dreary and unsatisfying, though Bo Derek lights up every scene she is in(especially in the hot tub!)